Site provisioning: add web part to page

Question

I would like to present a document library on the home page (default.aspx) of a classic SPO site. What I would do with hand is to edit the page - add web part - apps - select the document library.

I exported this web part, added a few placeholders to the dynamic properties and I am able to add it to a new site, but I have difficulties with one property:

<property name="ListName" type="string">#ListID#</property>

Now, I can query the list id with

$listid = (Get-PnPList | where {$_.Title -eq $listname}).ID

and substitute the #ListID# placeholder in the xml, but isn't there any better way to achieve this, without extra rounds? Can I maybe put this in the provisioning template?

Edit: Site provisioning done like:

New-PnPWeb -Title $Title -Url $SubSiteUrl -Template $Template -InheritNavigation   #default STS#0
Connect-PnPOnline $url -Credentials $credential
Apply-PnPProvisioningTemplate -Path $template

The "Document" library is made by the default STS#0 template, I don't see, how I could get the library ID. The PnP template is almost empty.

Answer 1

You can use the {{listid:ListName}} token instead of hard-coding the GUID.

When you use this token , the provisioning engine will fix the placeholder with the actual value of the List ID.

For example, if your list/document library name is Documents, use {{listid:Documents}}. Put the below line of code in your template xml file and then PnP will fix it for you:

<property name="ListName" type="string">{{listid:Documents}}</property>

Reference - Provisioning Engine tokens

Answer 2

This is the approach I use. The problem with SP Online and remote APIs is that you have no access to a strongly-typed XsltListView webpart object, so you're stuck importing an XML-based web part and swapping out the placeholders as you've done.

I don't know what your provisioning process is like, but the ones I use are typically fully automated WebJobs and the placeholder approach is pretty solid once the process is set up.